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Saturday, 17 March 2012

Caramel Mud Cakes - a Random Fail

Each month I intend to enter Dom's random recipe challenge. Each month he announces the theme and I scurry away to see what recipe I'll get. Ocassionally I actually make and post the proscribed recipe. More often than not I look at it and try to think how I'll persuade myself to eat X, Y or Z ingredient, or ponder how to cut down a savoury recipe intended for 4, 6 or more to just the required one portion. And then I give up and the intended random recipe remains in my cookery books and never makes it to the plate or to this blog.

Where is this leading I hear you asking... Well, this month Dom has set his random recipe challenge as being cookery book number 17 on the shelf. Not a problem, cookery book duly plucked off the shelf. Quite excited, as the chosen book is simply 'Chocolate'. A small book purchased from Marks and Spencer, and containing many delicious looking recipes for chocolate containing goodies - yum, what would I get?

The random page opened showed caramel choc-chip mud cakes. Oh yum indeed. So I set to making them.

- Bake for about 25 minutes, then allow to cool a little in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

- Melt the chocolate and pipe onto the cakes to decorate.

I had such high hopes for these - they smelled utterly delicious while they were baking. Afterwards they did sink slightly in the tins, which should have warned me.

When I cut into them, the texture was heavy and dense in the middle. I guess I should have expected this as there was only 35g self raising flour in the batter and lots of weighty ingredients like golden syrup. I think they were cooked through, but wasn't willing to inflict them on my testers - I have a reputation to uphold here ;-) so I sadly have no taste report for you.

If you don't mind heavy, dense, chewy centres, this may be the cake for you. But not for me. I think the recipes in the book are from the Australian Women's Weekly. Browsing their website for this recipe I came across a number of caramel mud cakes, (there are some here) some of which showed the texture I could see in mine (here) but some seemed to have a lighter texture (here). I don't actually know what mud cake texture should be like, so if anyone can enlighten me that would be great. I might make them again because they just smelled so delicious but instead of using 110g plain flour and 35g self raising, I might use 110g self raising and 35g plain.

13 comments:

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the recipe. Most mud cakes I've made have been very dense and moist, and almost fudgy in texture - just like the centre of your cakes.

It looks almost as if they are slightly overcooked and should have had a molten centre - did the recipe say to expect a clean test probe, or mention that the recipe was too moist for that particular test?

But they look so pretty C! Like Suelle, I would expect a mud cake to be dense - think mud! They sound quite delicious anyway and I think I might have to try some for myself. Sadly, I don't have those lovely bar shapes you have nor your chocolate drizzling skills.

Suelle - I think they are supposed to be cooked-through cakes rather than runny desserts. The helpful (not!) instructions just say 'cook for about 25 minutes'. No mention of texture, testing or probes. I think I was expecting a different texture (more cake like) but this moist/fudge texture is probably right.

Well I think they look and sound utterly divine. I LOVE dense mud cakes, much prefer them to those lighter than air numbers which really can;t be classed as a mud cake at all. This would get an epic tick from me ;0)

I love mud cakes - heavy and dense sounds about right to me - I agree with Suelle that they don't need to be cooked through properly and in fact are a little better for a gooey centre.

The one thought that occurs to me is that perhaps the long thin shaped cakes you made might have cooked through quicker than a friand or muffin shape so maybe that made a difference to the baking time. I am sure I would have eaten them though as they look great - wish I could be one of your testers :-)

well firstly... I think they LOOK wonderful... you've properly 'polished a turd' as the saying goes (although i'm sure they didn't taste that bad... secondly, I actually quite like a dense cake... i'm a bit of a cookie dough fiend so if it tasted or had the consistency of anything like this then its a winner for me!... and thirdly, thank you for entering, regardless xx